Recent Doc Team meeting - Poll idea (Do people really use computer-based help?)

[Douglas Pollard]

On 05/10/2014 04:40 AM, Karl Auer wrote:
> On Sat, 2014-05-10 at 09:27 +0100, Colin Law wrote:
>> Just a note that google is not nearly as useful for less experienced
>> users as good Help can be.
> There are two quite different ckasses of in-bult help. The first is help
> for what you might call known things - "how do I use this thing to do
> such-and-such". In-built help is often quite useful for this -
> LibreOffice's GUI help system for example, or pretty much any man page.
> This sort of help is fairly easy to incrementally improve, by adding
> sections, rewording, adding more explanation, improving the indexing and
> so on.
>
> The second kind of help, though, is for unknown things - help when
> things go wrong or do not behave as expected. In-built help for these
> situations is far less effective. Certainly Windows users have been
> trained for decades not to bother with Microsoft's insultingly useless
> in-built troubleshooting.
>
> The experience of many decades of computing has shown that the very best
> means of providing the second sort of help is to establish a user
> community.
>
>>    They do not have the experience to filter the google results to find the useful stuff.
> A community provides help with that meta-problem too. "Try searching
> for...", "the keyword you are looking for is..." and so on.
>
> Regards, K.
>
I started with an on line course that the  Debian guys had on line. I 
learned a lot there but as I progressed in knowledge also used Help to 
solve specific problems. Still Debian was a struggle for a Windows user. 
Along came Ubuntu and it was easier to use with my mostly Windows 
skills.  I hated the name and it put me off to the point where it was a 
year before I tried it. I think it was the documentation, help and on 
line information that really made me a user. Back in the early years 
some of the on line geeks did much to keep windows users from Linux with 
their arrogance toward windows converts but that changed.  Even to day  
there are some wise cracks about windows that tend to turn away 
Microsoft users who come to Ubuntu to try it. They see us smart mouthing 
their choice of software. They go back to Windows where they feel 
welcome. When talking to Microsoft users I compliment them on their 
choice of software and only after that, ease into telling them of the 
advantages of Ubuntu over Windows.  I have made some converts.  We need 
to remember that windows is their chosen desktop until they finally 
become Ubuntu users who will be loyal.    Dual booting back then was 
what I did, as I was using Video programs on Windows to make videos but 
when Linux video programs finally got usable enough to do video in 
Ubuntu I never went back to Microsoft. I think new users and us older 
ones use the help programs when starting out and to solve user problems 
after years of use.  I think that without good help and good 
documentation Ubuntu will slip into being a thing of the past.  A lost 
opportunity! I am afraid Linux would  be a none Geek nightmare as it was 
in the early years without  really good on line help.

-- 
      Doug Pollard
Albin Vega Sea Legs 2225
          KK4YGO